By: Dayan
Introduction
The autonomous driving field has recently witnessed another wave of investment boom in the past six months, including autonomous driving startups like WeRide, Plus, and HoloMatic, which have either made progress in financing or directly listed on the U.S. stock market using the SPAC mode. Compared with the aimless investment in the past, the development goal of autonomous driving has now shifted from the short-term challenge of commercializing L4 passenger cars or Robotaxis to seeking transformation for commercialization in the short term.
WeRide, focusing on Robotaxis
Recently, WeRide has disclosed its latest C-round financing, with a valuation of $3.3 billion after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. This round of investment, completed within less than four months after the previous B-round financing of $310 million, proves the enthusiasm of the capital market for the company. The investors in this round include IDG Capital, He Capital, Matrix Partners China, Cypress Star, Yunyue Capital, and K3 Ventures, as well as early investors such as CMC Capital and Hillhouse Capital.
In the past few months, WeRide has accelerated the deployment of new businesses both in China and abroad. While many autonomous driving companies focus on the Robotaxi business, WeRide also cooperates with the leading enterprise in the Chinese bus industry— Yutong Bus, to develop Robobus business and promote the strategy of using Robobus and Robotaxi in parallel. Moreover, WeRide has obtained the fully autonomous vehicle testing license issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in Silicon Valley, becoming the only startup that has the simultaneous testing permit for unmanned driving in China and the United States. In early February this year, WeRide also became the first autonomous driving enterprise in China to obtain the license for online ride-hailing operation in Guangzhou. What is particularly worth mentioning is that in the field of Robotaxi, as of November 2020, WeRide’s Robotaxi operation had safely completed 147,128 trips within one year of operation, serving more than 60,000 users, without any active responsibility accidents.
Plus, the second largest player in autonomous driving trucksAfter Tusimple went public, IMa Technology, founded in 2016, became the second largest company in the field of self-driving heavy trucks by being listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the third quarter of this year through the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. V (hereinafter referred to as “HCIC V”). After going public, IMa Technology had a market value of approximately $3.3 billion and also raised about $500 million in new financing through the IPO to provide fresh blood for future development.
In terms of technology, IMa Technology adopts a “dual-line parallel” development strategy, which actively develops Level 4 self-driving technology while promoting the mass production of self-driving heavy trucks at the vehicle regulation level. This is intended to help logistics companies reduce high-speed trunking logistics costs and enhance road safety. In terms of forward-looking technology, on the one hand, IMa Technology seeks to use NVIDIA DRIVE Orin (SoC) platform, a vehicle regulation level supercomputer platform developed by NVIDIA, in the next-generation mass-produced self-driving heavy truck product to enhance the computational power of the self-driving controller. On the other hand, it has also formed a strategic cooperation with BlackBerry to further increase the safety and reliability of its own self-driving system by deploying Blackberry QNX technology, so as to occupy a leading position in the domestic autonomous driving platform.
In addition, IMa Technology is actively promoting product implementation. In China, it has joined hands with Zhitu Technology to launch the J7 L3, an advanced self-driving heavy truck of FAW Jiefang, which will be officially launched in 2021. This model has passed certification tests such as dual warning (lane departure warning and forward collision warning) and AEB (automatic emergency braking), and is the only self-driving heavy truck in China that has been announced and has the conditions for mass production and listing. After the product is launched, it will greatly enhance China’s technical capabilities in the field of self-driving heavy trucks, and is expected to achieve a triple win situation for manufacturers, logistics companies, and drivers, as well as accelerate the introduction of L3-level technology into the vehicle models of other commercial vehicle companies. In overseas markets, IMa Technology is working with Iveco and Cummins. On the one hand, it seeks to deploy the IMa PlusDrive self-driving system on the latest generation of Iveco S-WAY heavy trucks, while also seeking the development of self-driving natural gas heavy trucks with Iveco and Cummins. In addition, IMa Technology is actively cooperating with logistics companies such as SF Express and Xinhongzhi to operate advanced self-driving heavy trucks on high-speed trunking logistics routes in Wuhan and other places.
HoloDrive by IMa Technology makes heavy truck customers get the investment return in a yearThe autonomous driving technology company HongjingIMa announced the completion of nearly 100 million yuan of Series A financing, attracting the attention of domestic and foreign industry peers. Its establishment of a leading-edge technology and a commercialized ecosystem has been supported by Intel and Xilinx for basic architecture construction, and partnered with JAC Motors and An Neng Logistics for terminal landing. It is a full-stack autonomous driving service provider with integrated soft and hard capabilities, driving commercialization for L1-L4 autonomous driving systems covering various commercial vehicle scenarios, including passenger cars, heavy trucks, buses, and mining trucks.
Currently, HongjingIMa’s HWP system, composed of a vehicle-grade domain controller ADCU, vehicle-grade positioning and inertial navigation P-Box, four vehicle-grade cameras, three DJI LiDARs, five millimeter-wave radars, and V2X vehicle-road collaborative full-stack autonomous driving software, can achieve 0-100 km/h highway autonomous driving under load, including predictive cruising, lane change, auto-navigation, auto-congestion control, auto-high-speed control system, and sensor self-cleaning capabilities, reducing driver stress and minimizing traffic accidents, enabling logistics companies to recoup their investment in autonomous driving systems within a year.
Overall, compared with the previous pursuit of L4 level automation, it can be observed from the recent successful autonomous driving companies’ financing that everyone has become more pragmatic. On the one hand, L3/L4 platforms require continuous investment from software to hardware; on the other hand, commercialized landing of driving assistance or L4 targeting specific scenarios such as trunk logistics vehicles. Expanding one’s circle of contacts and creating a full industry ecosystem for autonomous driving, including original equipment manufacturers, logistics companies, core component companies, and software and hardware suppliers, will also be a clear sign of success for autonomous driving technology companies.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.